It was a split-second decision, staying behind. One of those ideas you can barely process while your brain is stringing out cusswords a mile long. I’m standing in the lip of the alley, where the trash thins out into the trample of the wider street. There’s no time for second thoughts, but they’re there anyway, sticking me all over like hot acupuncture needles.
I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get through those doors. How I’m going to distract Longwai long enough for Osamu to get here. All I know is that Mei Yee’s timetable has suddenly grown a hell of a lot shorter than mine. And I’ve got promises to keep.
My body feels so much lighter without my gun tucked into my jeans. Like a piece of me is missing. The nautilus shell is still jammed up a sleeve of my sweatshirt. More damning evidence. I kneel down and find an empty bag of dried seaweed bites. The kind Hiro and I used to toss at each other during study sessions. The logo—a cutesy cartoon cat licking its lip—is long faded. No one would bother to pick this up.
I slip the shell in—shove it to the far edge of the wall. The cellophane wrapper crushes hopelessly under my boot. Crunching against a wreath of shiny, jagged glass. The pieces are as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. Perfect for peeling back skin, slicing veins.
My hand hovers over them, twitching as I weigh the risk.
I can go in there without a plan, but there’s no way in hell I’m walking in without a weapon.
I grab the largest fragment of glass, shove it into my front pocket.
Better not get caught in the alley. My brain’s adrenaline highlights this point. With double underlines and stars in the margins, the way Hiro used to mark up his biology textbooks. I take note (the way I never really did when I was actually studying), slip out into the wider streets, and start walking.
I’m not as far from the alley mouth as I’d like to be when Fung rounds the corner. For such a hulk of a man, he’s fast. When he sees me, he shifts gears, lurches into double speed. I barely have a chance to flinch before he’s next to me, seizing my hoodie like a dog’s scruff.
“You,” he grunts. “What are you doing back here?”
“I was on my way to see Longwai.” I keep my voice level and long, like a ruler. Not the easiest feat when I can see Fung’s gun not-so-subtly strapped against his hip.
“Yeah?” The gangster’s eyebrow quirks, and the beast on his face moves like the New Year’s dragon dances. The ones that will soon take place in Seng Ngoi’s streets. “Funny thing. He wants to see you, too. You stood up his runs.”
Shit. The runs. How could I forget? Not that there was much I could do in any case.
Fung doesn’t let go of my sweatshirt. He tugs me back to the brothel’s yawning door, pausing only to discard our shoes. I feel like a squirming rodent being dragged back to an eagle’s aerie. Waiting to be torn apart by razor talons and beaks.
The lounge has a few smokers, but Longwai’s couch is empty—just a stretch of threadbare fabric and sagging cushions. Fung pulls me through the smoke. We pass couches and the upturned corners of rugs and even serving girls. I look into their faces, hoping against hope that one of them will be Mei Yee. That the words we heard behind the window were a terrible, unreal illusion.
But she isn’t there. Not holding a serving tray or behind the zither. She’s not even lurking in the shadows.
My chest feels like someone’s pumped it full of liquid lead. I see the same pain in the other girls’ faces.
Fung keeps walking, dragging me through to the hall.
The east hall.
We stride past doors full of nameplates, to the end, where stairs curl up. At the bottom step, the gangster releases my sweatshirt, prods me forward with a growl.
“Up you go.”
I conquer every step, trying not to think about whether Fung’s got a gun pointed at my back. I think, instead, of how close I am to the book. How freedom has never felt farther away.
When we reach the top, my pulse is scattered and uneven. Just like Fung’s thick-knuckled knock on the door.
Longwai isn’t wearing his lounging jacket when he opens the door. He’s dressed like Fung—only smarter. Buttoned-up shirt. A blazer. Slacks. All black. Like a Western businessman preparing to go to a funeral. Except Western businessmen usually don’t wear gold chains around their necks or guns on their belts.
And I’m really, really hoping there won’t be any funerals today.…
The leader of the Brotherhood sees me. The knife scar on his face bulges along with his jaw, purple and shiny. This, with his smart dress, makes him look more like a predator than ever before.
“I thought I asked you to check the alley.” He shoots a sharp look past my shoulder, at Fung.
“I did, sir,” the guard says quickly. “Found this one skulking nearby.”
“I didn’t know Hak Nam’s side streets were off-limits.” I try my best to look bewildered.
“They are if I say so.” There’s no smoke weighing down Longwai’s eyes. No subtle sloth to his movement. If he was a cobra before, now he’s a mongoose. His gaze snakes back to Fung. “Keep searching. Leave the boy here for now. We’re long overdue for a discussion.”
My hands clench tight against my thighs as Fung walks away, moves back down the stairs. I feel the glass, sharp and pressing through denim.
Longwai walks away from the door, and the room comes into full view. The first thing I see are the guns and cruel-edged knives. A whole wall of metal and trigger, power and pain staring me in the face. The shard in my pocket is starting to feel like a bad joke.
I try not to stare at it too long. There are plenty of other things to look at. A large television screen crowned with rabbit ears and tinfoil. A tank full of aquamarine water and tropical fish that stretches across an entire wall. A hefty, lacquered writing desk. The top drawer with its delicate golden lock.
I’m so, so close. If Mei Yee is right.
Mei Yee. On my way up the stairs, I’d thought maybe she would be here. But the shadows of this room are empty things. She’s somewhere downstairs, behind one of the many doors.
Longwai walks to the middle of the room, where a glass-topped table stretches out. Perfect lines of white powder streak across it: albino tiger stripes.
Every inch of me is alert—fighting fear and the very real sense that I’m prey. Prey in the deepest corners of the beast’s lair. I put on the face I always wore when I was younger and my father decided to chastise me. Aloof, cocked brow. Like nothing in the world could stop me.
“Trouble?”
“Nothing that concerns you. Yet.” Longwai stands over the table, and I realize that the glass is really a mirror, shining his own towering height back at him. “I’m more curious about why you missed our last appointment. And the one before that.”
“My runner got stabbed. I haven’t been able to find a replacement. It’s not easy to find vagrants willing to work with you.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Longwai’s hands rise up to his belt line, lifting the jacket up with it. His pistol gleams against the aquarium’s tropical light. “You failed to honor our agreement. I’m not the forgiving type.”
“So I’ve heard.” I feel every ounce of blood in my head as my heart drills it through, beat by beat. But I keep my mask up. Stay cool. Don’t look at the wall of sharp, sharp knives. “But you kill me, and it’s a guarantee that no vagrant will ever run for you again. No matter how good the money is. Survival is the highest law.”
“You’re a dangerous boy. Clever.” Longwai’s hand pulls away from the weapon, goes up to cradle his hairless chin. “And here I was thinking you were the disposable one.”
It’s all I can do not to look over at the desk. So close. I’m so, so close. Just feet away from the book. All it would take was a distraction and a swift movement. Bullet or blade to the head.
But those guns on the wall probably aren’t even loaded. Not like the gun in Longwai’s holster. And even if I did get the book and get downstairs, I don’t know where Mei Yee is. I wouldn’t have time to look for her.
It’s not the right moment. But what terrifies me is the very real possibility that the right moment will never come. That this is it.
“I like you, Dai,” the drug lord says, “which is why you have all your appendages intact and a brain without a bullet lodged in it. You’re smart. You work the system. Get things done. I need men like you.”
Air grows stale in my lungs. I look down at the tabletop mirror. Where the lines of cocaine double, become more than they actually are.
“I need men like you,” he repeats, “but I also need to know I can trust you. I need to know you have my best interests at heart.”
“Is this an invitation?” I’m not faking the breathlessness in my voice. Out of all the things I was expecting when I was dragged through this door, an invitation to join the Brotherhood was not among them. Tsang would be peeing his pants right now.
“It depends on how you want to look at it. Try to see things from my perspective. Do you honestly think I can let you walk away from this operation? After how much you’ve seen? Anyone else would be in a body bag now. But you have guts and brains. I’d hate to let such assets go to waste.”
“So… I join the Brotherhood or get carved up and shot?”
“Let’s call it an opportunity.”
“Well, I am an opportunist.” I try to grin. I try not to think of Hiro and Pat Ying and Jin Ling and Mei Yee and all the other countless lives this man has destroyed. I try not to feel the endless pieces of shrapnel always shredding, always burning in my chest.
“Of course, there are the formalities before you become an official member. Background checks and oaths and such. And there’s the little matter of your loyalty. All my men must pass a certain test.”
“Anything,” I say.
“Anything?” His hand falls away from his chin, burrows into the pockets of his suit.
I nod and think of hundreds of things he could make me do. Hundreds of things I would hate.
“One of my girls has been giving me trouble.”
No. No. No. Anything. Anything but that. I feel like a surgeon has sliced me in half, hollowed me out, my guts spilling over his blue gloves like stringy pumpkin seeds. My head spins and I try very, very hard to keep my smile on my face.
Longwai starts pacing circles around me. “I think she’s been communicating with someone on the outside. We found a hole in her window just this morning, and one of the other girls claims she saw a seashell on the other side.”
“What do you plan on doing with her?” I’m glad I gave most of my meals to Chma, because my stomach is churning like the waters at the stern of a ferry. A chaos of waves, cut to pieces by an engine’s sharp blades.
“You don’t keep a rotten apple in the bin. Though I’m beginning to think they’re all rotten. It happens every few years. Some girl decides to run and all the others get riled up. I’ll probably have to replace the whole lot.” He shakes his head, like he’s getting rid of the side thought. “But if she was talking to someone through that window… I need to know what she said. Who she was talking to.”
“You—” Longwai pauses and walks over to the corner where a miniature refrigerator hums away its benign existence. “You are going to help me get the truth.”
The refrigerator door opens with the clink of bottles and a crack of too-bright light. Longwai grabs something I can’t really see. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, hidden as he nudges the door shut.
“I’ve already given her some time to preview her fate if she decides to keep quiet. You and I—we’re going to go downstairs and ask her some questions.”
“But what—what do I ask?”
“The questions are my job. If she doesn’t answer, I want you to use this.” His palm opens, like an oyster giving up its pearl. Only it’s not a precious gem in Longwai’s soft hand. It’s a syringe, slim as a pencil, filled with liquid the color of beef broth. The drug lord is careful to keep the needle far from my skin as he hands it to me.
The syringe is cool poison on my palm. I try to keep my hand from shaking.
Heroin.
He wants me to inject her.
“Don’t worry. It should be a simple-enough job.” He’s smiling as he says this. “After all, like you said, survival is the highest law.”